Speculative Fiction from Around the World

We’re very pleased to note we’re up for the World Fantasy Award – Lavie for the World SF Blog, and Charles for his own Bibliophile Stalker blog, both in the Special Award – Non Professional category.

A very strong year for this award, with a more international flavour than is usual for it. I am very pleased to see two Apex Book of World SF 2 contributors (Lauren Beukes and Nnedi Okorafor) short-listed in the Best Novel category, French publishers Stéphane Marsan & Alain Névant nominated in the Special Award – Professional for Bragelonne, and Angélica Gorodischer being given a Lifetime Achievement award.

The World Fantasy Awards Lifetime Achievement Winners for 2011 are Peter S. Beagle and Angélica Gorodischer. The awards are presented annually to individuals who have demonstrated outstanding service to the fantasy field.

The World Fantasy Awards nomination ballot has also been announced. Winners will be announced at this year’s World Fantasy Convention, to be held October 27-30, in San Diego CA. (Lifetime Achievement winners are announced in advance of the event).

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From Bar to Bar has an interview with Braulio Tavares. Here’s his bio (from the site):

Braulio Tavares was born in 1950, in Campina Grande, a city in Brazilian North-East, and now lives in Rio de Janeiro. He studied cinema and social sciences but left both courses without getting a degree. He is a songwriter with some 60 songs professionally recorded, and works as a journalist, TV writer and translator (he has translated books by H. G. Wells, R. L. Stevenson, Isaac Asimov, Tim Powers, etc). In 1989 he won the coveted Caminho Award for SF, in Portugal, with his collection A Espinha Dorsal da Memória (The Backbone of Memory). He has published more than 20 volumes of poetry, fiction and literary essays. He is also the author of the Brazilian entries both in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (ed. Peter Nicholls and John Clute) and The Encyclopedia of Fantasy (ed. John Clute & John Grant). His stories have been published in the USA, Canada, Portugal, Russia and Latvia. He is also a member of the Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA). His story “Stuntmind” was selected for the anthology “Cosmos Latinos” (ed. Andrea Bell & Yolanda Molina-Gavilán). He has edited four anthologies of fantastic fiction for Casa da Palavra (Rio de Janeiro), with two more due to appear in 2011.

And here’s an excerpt:

“I read SF since I was a kid, and many times I had the sensation that I was the only person who enjoyed those books. Years passed, and I got a small number of friends who shared my taste for the genre until, circa 1986, when I was already living in Rio, I got in touch with the CLFC, “Clube de Leitores de Ficção Científica” (SF Readers Club), through Roberto Nascimento, from São Paulo. Then I started writing SF seriously. But at that time I was a published author, after a career in jornalism and other writing jobs. I had already written some thousands of newspaper articles, many of them movie reviews. I had published some books of poetry, and a good number of mainstream and fantastic short stories, in magazines or literary journals. And I had already published, in chapbook form, one of my most successful books, The Stone of Midday or Artur and Isadora, what we call in Brazil’s Northeast “folheto de cordel”, a fantasy tale in verse, aimed at young readers.”

Maurizio Manzieri: Living in Italy, I’ve always been used to read non-English authors in their Italian translation. Luckily in this country of excellent translators and enlightened publishers many masterpieces have found easily their way on our shelves. My favorite international author, still to be overreached, can be definitely considered the Polish Stanislaw Lem. He’s gone now… Despite his controversial relationship with SFWA, I think his words will talk a long time to the generations to come. In 1961, on the year I was born, he wrote the novel Solaris, a book I’ve been reading eight times since its discovery, one the most successful interpretations of our close and incomprehensible encounter with an alien entity. I enjoyed very much the first movie rendition by Tarkovsky in 1972 – a tad less the last one by Soderbergh in 2002 – and I found the topic quite terrific for the hugeness of concepts and feelings involved. One day I’m sure there will be a new remake paying a due homage to his vision.

Jukka Halme: The world of international science fiction and fantasy has in recent years turned into a small, but interesting smörgåsbord. This is truly a great thing and something I, as someone hailing the rest of the world from a non-English speaking country, am both grateful and hopeful about. It reminds me of them Olden Days, when the relatively small translated SF/F-book market in Finland was fairly broad in scope, including not only well-known Anglo-American masters as Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke and Aldiss, but also Lem, Strugatski’s, Klein and Nielsen.

I will start by mentioning French SF writers. I have worked as a co-editor in French SF magazine GALAXIES for a few years. Also, having spent many years in a French speaking country, I can understand French and write and read it almost as if it were my native language (which is Greek). So there is no wonder that I am more familiar with French speaking writers.

Sissy Pantelis: French SF is quite different from its Anglophone counterpart. It is more literary, fantasy elements are often incorporated in it in a very natural and attractive way. It is often associated with other genres like horror, humor or surrealism. And French writers pay a huge attention to the literary aspect of the story – whatever its genre- so, not surprisingly, French SF is rich in diversity of writing styles and it is often poetic. – read the full article!

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In a strong issue, the protagonists of these three stories find a reality that doesn’t match their expectations or hopes. Jeremy R. Butler tells of a worker in the asteroid belt who dreamed of adventure in space, but instead finds he has to cope with boredom. The boyfriend of the narrator in Annalee Newitz’s story disappears, quite literally; getting him back is not everything the protagonist imagines. Will Ludwigsen depicts a cop getting all his questions answered, even the ones he perhaps wished were left open. Continue reading →

How did you come up with the idea for The Technician, is there a particular work or works that inspired you?

The idea for The Technician wasn’t mine, at least not the core idea, which came from Nicola Zurlo, the screenwriter. Nearly all the professional operators involved in the making of the short, like me, were students attending the last year of cinema school in Milan. The screenplay that started the project was the final exam paper for the screenwriting class.

Once the first draft was complete, it was submitted to me along with other scripts and, although it was very different from the one we shot in the end, I immediately fell in love with the atmosphere it suggested. It was deeply changed over time but its coldness, its air of nostalgia, its gloominess were in the first draft to stay (the original script was called Blue Overall and was about a society where feelings were forbidden and the Technician’s job was to mend people deemed to be too emotional!!).

Is The Technician intentionally steampunk?

When I started to work on the screenplay I immediately realized that, in order to bring some of the screenwriter’s intentions to the surface and to make some situations visually plausible, I would have to chose a well-defined aesthetic; at the same time I had to work it out on a very low budget (a little more than 3.000 (three thousand) euros). Steampunk was just right because it is based on the alteration of objects, clothes and technologies of the past, and with a little research and imagination it’s easy to recreate the right atmosphere.

How did you first hear of steampunk and why did you choose to make a movie about it?

I’ve been a steampunk fan for a long time now, but I had never tried to make something like this before, so we took a massive risk! – read the full interview.

I’m not sure what to say. I was born in Malaysia, educated overseas, have worked on several continents and, right now, am temporarily back in Malaysia with my family.

How do you balance motherhood and writing full-time?

I wish I didwrite full-time! In fact, that dream lasted for an entire three months, before I took over homeschooling our children a little over a year ago. Now, my “full-time” job is preparing, tutoring and assessing two children, one of whom has dyscalculia (the mathematical equivalent of dyslexia).We’re a bit of an anomaly in this region because we don’t have any servants nor any parents or in-laws to offer support. I can’t think of the last time my husband, J, and I had an evening to ourselves. It would have been years ago, I’m sure. I mention this because it’s not a case of “motherhood” (singular) so much as “parenthood” (partnership). In many ways, J is a lot more “maternal” than I am. If the kids hurt themselves, they run to him; if they want to know how to work a shifting spanner or how big a chicken’s eyeball is (and they’re quite large, relative to brain case size), they come to me.With the teaching, cooking (I love to cook!) and my share of the household duties out of the way, I do as most other writers do and scrape out some writing time from what’s left over. It helps that I’m a relatively quick writer.

You write SF romance. How do these genres complement each other?

Yes. Well. I came out recently at Heather Massey’s The Galaxy Express [http://www.thegalaxyexpress.net] to say that I’m abandoning the term “SF romance” for my books. The way I see it, the men write “space opera”, but the women write “sf romance”. Heinlein writes about incestuous love across time-travelling generations and it’s still “science-fiction”. A woman writes about a love triangle in a charged political environment and it’s “sf romance”? Puh-lease. I may go so far as to describe my work as “space opera with romantic elements”, although even that’s disingenuous because “space opera”, by definition, is about romance–the lush offplanet settings, the galaxy-wide intrigues, the ravening beams of consumption, the phallic spaceships thrusting into the dark womb of space. Space opera has always been and, to my mind, always will be THE romance-driven sub-genre of science-fiction, human emotions writ large on a galactic canvas. In which case, why come up with a new category to describe a story just because a womanthrows in some exchange of body fluids? (Remember that Norman Spinrad, Philip Jose Farmer, Heinlein, all wrote about lubricant-assisted piston action in their books. Do we characterise *them* as “romantic” or even “erotic” writers? Of course not! Think of the cooties!)What I will say is that romance, no matter the sex of the writer, can add incredible depth to characterisation, regardless of the genre in question. It’s another piece to the puzzle of a person that can be used as narrowly or widely as one wishes in order to illuminate basic questions: what does this person care for? to what extent? what is this person willing/not willing to give up in this particular situation?

4. How receptive is Malaysia when it comes to genre fiction?

I wouldn’t know, to be honest. I don’t target any Malaysian (or Singaporean) publishers for my work. From what I’ve seen on the bookshelves, paranormal stories are very popular, what Charles Tan described as “magical realism” when describing genre fiction in the Philippines.

To atone for this omission, I write a large number of “minority” characters into my books. (It strikes me as amusing that I have to refer to olive/tan/black-skinned women/people as minority characters when we make up the majority of the world’s population, but them’s the socio-political breaks.) And, just to turn things around a bit, my villains tend to–but not always!–have the pale skins! LOL

Two things. If you’re doing this through some visceral yearning, then learning the craft will always stand you in good stead. Reading books you enjoy to then analyse why you enjoy them, playing around with different points of view, taking a few literature courses and so on. If you’re doing this to make a living out of, then remember that, not only do you have to do the first thing, but you also have to run your work as a business.

KS “Kaz” Augustin writes space opera(!) and some contemporary and fantasy romance. Her website is at http://www.ksaugustin.com Under the pen-name Cara d’Bastian, she is also writing an urban fantasy series set in south-east Asia. You can catch up with Kaz’s and Cara’s blogs at http://blog.ksaugustin.com and http://caradbastian.blogspot.com respectively. When not writing, Kaz is private tutor to two very good children. They’re not Einsteins, but they’re willing to think and try things, which is all she asks.

New Delhi: The revolving doors at India’s English-language publishing companies are finally slowing down. A frenetic round of changes at the top or just below is almost over in terms of appointments and announcements. Penguin India, Random House India and Pan-Macmillan all have new editorial heads now.

At Random House India (RHI), the top editorial post is effectively being bifurcated. As is the company’s publishing imprint. Earlier brought out as Random House India publications, its titles will now come out under two separate imprints: Vintage for literary fiction and non-fiction; and Ebury for popular non-fiction.

Meru Gokhale, currently with Penguin UK, will take over as Editorial Director of the Vintage Imprint for RHI. Gokhale – who most recently published the 78-year-old first-time Pakistani writer Jamil Ahmad’s The Wandering Falcon to critical acclaim – will be dividing her time between India and the UK. This could actually mean good news for Indian writers published by RHI, since Gokhale’s part-time location in London will enable her to market these titles globally as well. – continue reading.

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The World SF Blog ran from 2009 to 2013. It offered news, links and original content in the form of commentary, round table discussions, essays, interviews, author highlights and original and reprint fiction from around the world.

The site won the 2012 BSFA Award for Best Non-Fiction, a 2012 Kitschies Black Tentacle (Special Achievement) Award, and was a 2011 World Fantasy Award nominee.

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